Safety attitudes and beliefs of junior Australian football players

Objectives: To describe the safety attitudes and beliefs of junior (aged 16–18 years) Australian football players.

Setting: Six Victorian Football League Under 18 (VFL U18) clubs in Victoria, Australia.

Methods: Cross sectional survey. Altogether 103 players completed a self report questionnaire about their safety beliefs and perceptions of support when injured, across three contexts in which they played: VFL U18 club, local club, and school.

Results: Although only 6% believed it was safe to play with injuries, 58% were willing to risk doing so. This increased to almost 80% when players perceived that their chances of being selected to play for a senior elite team would be adversely affected if they did not play. There were significant differences in the perceived level of support for injured players and in the ranking of safety as a high priority across the three settings. In general, the VFL U18 clubs were perceived as providing good support for injured players and giving a high priority to safety issues, but local clubs and particularly schools were perceived to address these issues less well.

Conclusions: Junior Australian football players have certain beliefs and perceptions in relation to injury risk that have the potential to increase injuries. These negative beliefs need to be addressed in any comprehensive injury prevention strategy aimed at these players.

`I like football when it doesn`t hurt`: factors influencing participation in Auskick

Auskick is the Australian Football League's (AFL) introductory program specifically designed to recruit and harness the interest of primary or elementary school-aged children between the ages of 5-12 years. As an induction program, Auskick is underpinned by a philosophy that foregrounds involvement and enjoyment as foundational to a pathway to an ongoing affiliation with Australian Rules football. Getting young people to identify with Australian Rules football from early on is a strategic aspect of growing or sustaining the game. Within its charter of mass recruitment, Auskick is more about promoting an interest in football than it is about talent identification. Indeed, only a tiny minority of the more than 110,000 children that partake in the Auskick program in 2004 will go on to compete at the highest level. Drawing on over 200 interviews conducted with parents and children attending Auskick sessions, this paper presents an overview of some of the factors that influence initial participation in Australian Rules football. Among other things the authors ask participants how they intend to negotiate the behaviours and practices required to play a body contact sport like Australian Rules football.

Determining the professional sport broadcasting landscape : an Australian football club perspective

The professional sport broadcasting landscape has received much attention from an economic and legal perspective. While the economic and legal focus has been the predominant association with sport broadcasting, there has been little research undertaken into the breadth of delivery and significance of broadcast coverage. The aim of this paper was to identify the professional sport broadcasting landscape in Australia. The sport broadcast landscape was examined from the perspective of two professional football codes. In-depth interviewing of senior managers of 11 AFL, and 10 NRL clubs was undertaken with the resulting data analysed, coded and emergent themes identified. Three core themes emerged: identified as territory, distribution and profile. A further seven sub-themes specific to the outcomes associated within each category were also identified. Major findings highlight the territorial nature of the Australian professional football league market, identifying the way in which clubs are representative of particular regions. Issues associated with free-to-air delivery, brand recognition and core market attributes were also identified. Results are presented; implications for management and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Satisfaction as a predictor of football club members' intentions

A survey of almost 8,000 season ticket holders of Australian Football League clubs suggests that a combination of tangible (ticketing arrangements) and intangible (feelings of personal involvement) aspects have the greatest influence on the satisfaction of members and their intentions regarding future membership.

Relating on-field performance to paid football club membership

An empirical investigation based on seven years’ data for a professional football league finds that on-field performance bears little relation to the number of paid members or season ticket holders for the clubs.

Correct weight? analysing Australian football through a derivative global or cultural cringe model

The application of a 'global' model, in practice usually British or American, and generalised sociological concepts to a particular sport and its social and cultural context is not always appropriate. In Australian academia, the custom is particularly appealing, due to the Australian colonial 'cultural cringe', the pattern of automatic deference to overseas (termed 'international') knowledge. This article argues that 'Fresh Prince of Coloma! Dome: Indigenous Logic in the AFL' (Football Studies, 8(1), 2005) inappropriately applies American sociological, and American football, logic to the indigenous Australian game Australian football, which differs in character both as a game and in its social, cultural and political context. The three researchers do not take account of the factors of height and weight in Australian football, and the average size of Aboriginal players, and of the relationship between speed and strength in the game as strategies and tactics change. Both omissions constitute fundamental flaws. American football and sports sociology's ideas of 'central position theory', with a suggestion of underlying racism, is of limited relevance to Australian football. It is also possible that the American sitcom, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, was neither a helpful muse nor a suitable metaphor for research into this subj ect. In Australian football, a game in which few 'central positions' are crucial and in which 'leadership positions' can be found in many parts of the ground, including the half-back flank and the wing, neither size nor position are the only major determinants of significance in the team.

Brand value in the context of Australian Football League clubs

This conceptual paper focuses on brand value for non-traditional products, and particularly, brand value in relation to Australian Football League Clubs, and its measurement. The concept of brand value has been addressed by a plethora of definitions and models in the literature, many of which focus on the measurement of brand value within traditional product industries. These models are often contingent on the intrinsic utility of the product itself, yet within non-traditional product areas, the product and the brand may be two distinct entities which should be differentiated in order to facilitate an accurate measurement of consumer-based brand value. To date, there has been limited research in this area and the general aim of this paper is to reveal the gaps in the current literature by providing an extension of traditional brand valuation theory to a non-traditional field. This paper illustrates its points with reference to a relevant model associated with “traditional” brand theories, and shows how it can be applied to the area of Australian Football League Clubs. This paper argues for the configuration of a more holistic model of brand value, including the antecedents and consequences of the value ascribed to brands by consumers, in order to encourage future research in brand equity based on the total utility derived from Australian Football League Clubs’ brands.

Professional education and training for early career players in the Australian Football League: footy first, second and third

In this presentation we discuss some of the findings of a research project funded by the Australian Football League (AFL) titled: Getting the Balance Right: Professionalism, Performance, Prudentialism and Playstations in the Life of AFL Footballers. The research explored the following issues: the emergence and evolution of a ‘professional identity’ for AFL footballers – an identity that has many facets including the emerging ideas that a professional leads a balanced life, and has a prudent orientation to the future, to life after football. This ‘professional identity’ isn’t natural, and must be developed through a range of ‘professional development’ activities (a common link to all other ‘professions’). In the AFL at this time professional development has a focus on engaging players in a variety of education and training activities – TAFE & University courses, and workshops and seminars that the industry has put in place to educate players about issues that the industry sees as important.

The presentation will focus on our research with players we classified as Early Career players. For many of these 17 to 21 year old young men the later years of secondary schooling were compromised in their pursuit of an AFL career, and their subsequent drafting is followed by intense efforts to physically prepare them for football. In this context our research indicates that many Early Career players put football first, second and third – education and training, and industry expectations that they participate in this sort of professional development come further down their list of priorities.

Investigating the influences on attendance and intention to rejoin with inaugural members of a new football team

This study investigated the effects of factors like member satisfaction and social rituals on desirable outcomes such as attendance, intention to rejoin and merchandise sales. This study focuses on the inaugural members of a new team in Australia’s A-League to gain insight into how loyalty develops amongst fans of new sporting organisations. The results show the importance to sports marketers of satisfying members and building ritual behaviour, as both are correlated with all of the positive outcomes investigated here.

All part of the hetero-normative? Women football fans` voices on players` sexual (mis)conduct

From interviews conducted in Victoria with women fans of Australian Rules Football, this paper examines their perceptions and rationalisations of alleged sexual misconduct by players. The paper is situated in the seeming contradiction of women avidly supporting male dominated sports despite players being implicated in misconduct against their gender. Women fans' voices about the reported misconduct are explored. These fall into two main categories that are referred to as the 'predatory female' and the 'rogue male' narratives. The former suggests that the sexual assertiveness of some women - the 'groupies' - unlocks men's primal sexuality. The latter points to footballers being immersed in a hyper-masculine sub-culture that predisposes them to treat women in an arbitrary, demeaning manner. The fans' voices, while condemning players' misconduct, suggest that predatory females, by actively seeking out footballers, become victims
because they trigger testosterone driven male responses. Rogue male behaviour is deprecated, but understood as stemming from masculine ways, accentuated by team bonding, that leads some individuals into misconduct, possibly as a means of emphasising their masculinity within their group. Explaining player misconduct in these ways enables fans to distance themselves from it and continue their passionate support of
football.

Teaching landing skills in elite junior Australian football: evaluation of an injury prevention strategy

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a preseason physical training programme that taught landing and falling skills in improving landing skills technique and preventing injury in junior elite Australian football players.

Methods: 723 male players who participated in an under 18 elite competition were studied prospectively in a non-randomised controlled trial over two consecutive football seasons. There were 114 players in the intervention group and 609 control players. The eight session intervention programme taught players six landing, falling, and recovery skills, which were considered fundamental for safe landing in Australian football. Landing skills taught in these sessions were rated for competence by independent and blinded assessors at baseline and mid-season.

Results: Evaluation of landing skills found no significant differences between the groups at baseline. Evaluation after the intervention revealed overall improvement in landing skills, but significantly greater improvement in the intervention group (z = –7.92, p = 0.001). Players in the intervention group were significantly less likely (relative rate 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.52 to 0.98) to sustain an injury during the season than the control group. In particular, the time to sustaining a landing injury was significantly less for the intervention group (relative rate 0.40, 95% confidence interval 0.17 to 0.92) compared with the control group.

Conclusions: Landing and falling ability can be taught to junior elite Australian football players. Players in the intervention group were protected against injury, particularly injuries related to landing and falls.

A victory for the fans? Melbourne's new football club in recent historical perspective

A new Association football team, Melbourne Victory, was created in Melbourne in 2005 as a founding member of the Australian A-League. Within little more than a year it was drawing peak crowds of 50,000 to matches and averaged over 30,000. It was forced to move from an 18,000 capacity stadium to one holding 55,000. Previous new club foundations in the 1990s had not been successful, despite being associated with popular Australian Rules football teams, Collingwood and Carlton. The Victory, however, seems to have attracted a different and wider demographic to the game. For the first time the growth of the code in Australia in based on the domestic population, not waves of inward migration as was the case in the 1880s, 1920s and the post-Second World War period. Preliminary studies of the fan base suggest that the future for the Victory is likely to be different from the recent past.

How is gender-based violence covered in the sporting news? An account of the Australian Football League sex scandal

Despite the significant amount of feminist and sociological research devoted to the question of sexual harassment and assault in sport, there has been little accompanying exploration of how the media discuss gender-based violence by sportsmen. This study examines the narratives of gendered behaviour that emerge in stories about Australian rules footballers and violence against women in the sport sections of two major Australian newspapers. As the audience for sport news is primarily male, the way that sexual misconduct by footballers is reported in this section of the newspaper provides an important dimension in theorising how media institutions influence public discourse and understandings of gender.

Football's world cup and its fans - reflections on national styles : a photo essay on Germany 2006

The football World Cup is the greatest multicultural sporting extravaganza of modern times. The notion of post-fandom tries to capture the ways in which fans now participate in and engage in self-aware and reflexive strategies to obtain their desired outcomes from attendance at or viewing such major events. This illustrated photo-essay on the World Cup looks at the experiences and behaviour of fans in three countries, Scotland, Germany and Australia, during the tournament with a view to extending our understanding of the relationships between fans and others temporarily interested in the World Cup and the promoters of such mega-events. It argues that the participants brought a wide range of expectations to the tournament and engaged in highly flexible and innovative approaches to ensure that they gained the maximum benefit, individually and collectively, from the experience.